MrShooter01
Expert Intervention
Caldari State
268
   |
Posted - 2012.09.28 21:09:00 -
[1] - Quote
I remember some guy on the eve online forums with a special expensive digital shirt. Bear with me on this one.
This shirt was originally only obtainable as part of a "special offer" where you spent over $100 on some other thing and got this shirt as a bonus. He started a rage thread about how this shirt suddenly became worthless because CCP made it available for purchase quite a while later in its infamous cash shop for 1000 aur, which pretty much everybody had in their wallet from one of it's free AUR promotions. The multi-billion isk shirt, which was so valuable because only a small number of people shelled out the $100+ "required" to get it as part of a promotion, was suddenly being sold by the hundreds for <20 million a pop.
So this guy, and the other owners of the rare collector's shirt, were pretty pissed. It turned out it was added to the shop "by accident" and CCP eventually decided to make a peace offering in the form of giving the owners of the "original" shirts some swanky digital leather coat.
Cool story, right?
Here's the point: the second most common argument in that thread was "YOU GOT WHAT YOU PAID FOR IDIOT, it was a PROMOTIONAL ITEM for a SPECIAL OFFER! :smug: :smug: :smug:" (the most common argument was "LMFAO YOU CARE ABOUT A DIGITAL SHIRT")
Despite that, technically, they were under no obligation to do anything whatsoever CCP went out of their way to type a few dev commands and say "we appreciate that you gave us a lot of money, we're sorry you feel this way, here's a dumb kittening jacket for your space barbie now stfu and gtfo". Because they cared.
The guys calmed down, people forgot about it, and all it took was giving a couple of worthless digital items to the affected persons.
Now some guys are upset that they aren't getting some promotional items because they spent money to support the game too quickly. The game is not even out yet, and CCP is doing the dumbest possible marketing thing they could possibly do (ARMCHAIR INTERNET GUY PRETENDS TO KNOW MORE THAN AN ENTIRE COMPANY FULL OF PEOPLE): making their customers feel dumb for spending money.
Literally the same mercenary pack with the same amount of aurum, the same items, at the same price is being touted as "new" because NOW if you buy it THIS WEEKEND ONLY you get "$6" worth of bonus dropsuits! What if you already per-ordered the mercenary pack before they thought to tack on some more promotional fluff?
"**** off, you got what you paid for: pre-release subject to change items for an unreleased game."
This entire thing would be a complete non-issue if CCP didn't take the above ****** attitude and instead decided to give the promotional items to the people who already spent money on their unreleased game.
No rage threads, no CCP silently deleting said rage threads, no customers who are going to be constantly wary about spending money on anything when CCP is going to turn around and offer the same thing next week with more stuff while telling their older customers to go cry in a corner.
It's not about the money, it's about sending a message. |